


below the verge

by xihale



Category: DC Animated Universe, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, M/M, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:38:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xihale/pseuds/xihale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Wally entered this world, he came through a rift in the dimensions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	below the verge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Martianico](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martianico/gifts).



When Wally entered this world, he came through a rift in the dimensions.

“I can’t just create a rift in time and space,” Bruce says, from the screen. He’s busy typing something on his end as he talks to John, he always is, but when he glances over to John, his eyes are sharp.

“I figured,” John says, having figured no such thing. “It’s just—I thought I’d ask. In case it’s not working out for him.”

“He’s already here,” Bruce says. “It has to work out. He has to work it out. We can’t all run to a different dimension every time something doesn’t work out.”

John nods and turns the screen off. Then he puts his head in his hands, and breathes deep.

 

::

 

These nights, when John runs his hand through the wilderness of Wally’s hair, trails his lips down the cheeks he can’t see are freckled in the dark, he imagines he can hear the ocean, taste the salt in the air on the tip of his tongue.

 

::

 

Wally’s not sure about the new uniform, John thinks.

“I’m not sure about the uniform,” Wally says. “It’s kind of a huge change.”

“That’s the point,” Clark says. It’s a lot more than he says, nowadays, but then again, Wally has always been special, even in this group of misfits and misplaced morals.

“I think it looks fine,” John says, because no one has said it yet. Everyone’s a little overwhelmed by the sight, he knows, and that’s a good thing, but he also knows that Wally won’t necessarily know that it’s a good thing. He needs a lot of hand-holding, sometimes, that boy. John’s boy.

Not John’s boy, not this one. Not yet.

“Thanks,” Wally says, brightly. Not many would be able to tell the hesitation in the sloping lines of his waist. John does, and so does everyone else in the room because, like it or not, they are the brightest and sharpest of humanity.

“It looks _fine_ ,” Bruce says. “If we can stop admiring the Flash and get back to work?”

“What work,” Shayera mutters under her breath, and both Diana and Clark pretend not to hear, and John pretends Bruce didn’t hear.

This is a little of what they’ve become; this is a little of who they are, what’s studded surely beneath their skin, tiny papercuts in their relationships where faith and solidarity used to be.

“Hey, the kitchen hasn’t changed,” Wally says, then he’s handing out glasses of iced mochas to everyone, beaming, all seven of them. “And I still know how to make mocha!”

Bruce and Shayera roll their eyes but Diana and J’onn are smiling, and even Clark takes a glass from Wally, keeping it in his hand. John takes one, too, and the taste of it on the tip of his tongue is curling candy, a burst of color he hasn’t tasted in a while amidst the dull grey. The tension in the room seeps out, as Wally puts an umbrella into Bruce’s glass that hadn’t been there before.  

"Sorry it's not bat-shaped," Wally says, and Bruce says, "I should have stayed in my cave today," with the slightest twitch in his cheek. 

That’s when John thinks, _I missed you_ , helplessly, the thought toxic in his heart, and Wally turns to him and smiles, the yellow of his uniform bright like their sun.

 

::

 

In the watchtower, J’onn stands in the main control room and goes through the reports, every day: Sector one, all-clear. Sector two, all-clear. Sector three, alert dismissed. Sector four. Five.

John floats by the windows, looking out at the stars and planets he should be patrolling and protecting, the Green Lantern ring on his finger and the Green Lantern oath on his tongue. Shayera sometimes stands with him. Diana and Clark are off to the side, often on the screen with the President or Bruce, instructing the former and arguing with the latter.

Wally, Wally’s displaced. He shifts the air, he makes mocha, he sometimes goes and bothers Bruce in his cave. The first League meeting he attends, Wally sits between Shayera and Diana in his new yellow uniform, and to his credit, he doesn’t fidget.

He’s really not as young as John remembers. 

He’d asked John about the patrol schedule, and John had to tell him that they didn’t patrol, anymore. John watches Wally drift like a log in a current, interested but bewildered, he thinks, though he doesn’t know if anyone else can tell. He’d told Wally about the library, once, in hopes that Wally would be interested, and Wally had given him a smile.

“I read through all the books,” Wally says. “Twice.”

“Even the boring books?” John asks, and he can’t help one corner of his lips rising.

“Even the boring books,” Wally says, laughing at himself. “Even the law books. The public safety regulations three times. They’re very,” he hesitates. “They’re very confusing,” he says. “That’s a lot of people we put in jail.”

“We don’t put anyone in jail,” Bruce says, later, much later, from the screen. “The State incarcerates the individuals who violate the law. We help with the security of the prisons, but we take no part in the convicting and sentencing processes.”

“And how many individuals violate the law?” Wally asks.

Bruce doesn’t repeat the number because Bruce doesn’t believe in repeating himself. Instead, Diana says, from Wally’s left, “Most of those are short-term, and in low-security prisons. The numbers have just gone up since the public safety regulations started being enforced more strongly.”

“You can talk to Clark about it,” John hears J’onn say to Wally, even later, as he passes the two of them talking after the meeting. “The Congress is suspended, but the President passes executive orders. And Clark usually reads over those.”

“Okay,” John hears Wally says. “Okay.”

“Crime has gone down,” John says to Wally, at the tail end of that day, the bewitching hour moments before midnight, when Wally isn’t wearing yellow and his ginger hair is ruffled like forest fire and he’s polishing off about maybe five pizzas by himself, sitting in John’s living room. These are the moments when John thinks he could touch Wally, maybe, and Wally can vibrate himself through solid walls but he’d stay still for John’s touch on his skin, maybe.

“Okay,” Wally says. “That’s great.”

John looks at him, sharply, but Wally meets his gaze in midst of a Hawaiian slice, and all John can think in that moment is  _Your eyes are fucking clear._

He wonders how he’s never noticed that before, the green shade of an ocean John’s never seen before. More, he wonders why he notices it now.

 

::

 

The uniform had been Clark’s idea. Diana and Bruce hadn’t said anything, and so it had happened.

When the idea came to John, it was presented in crisp black words floating on a light bluish screen, and it had made sense to John at the time. They all got new uniforms, got a little older, a little stranger with their past selves. It made sense that Wally would have done the same. It was only when John saw the yellow wrapped around Wally, his fingertips covered entirely and the only hint of red the lightning on his chest, that the whole thing struck John as weird. As  _wrong_. As if the uniform was not only completely different from whom Wally used to be but also the opposite, a reverse of Wally’s past self.  

Trouble was, Wally didn’t have a past self, because Wally didn’t have a present self. What you see is what you get with Wally.

And John, John’s always been good at seeing Wally.

 

::

 

In the dark, John can’t see the difference between yellow and red.

It's later, much later, when Wally slides his tongue between John’s lips, sweetly, and John takes it, raising his head slightly off the bed to meet the kiss properly. Wally has pushed his hood back so that his hair softly falls across his forehead and tickles John as they both moan, and Wally’s impatient against John’s entire body, a plaint weight pushing down on him. John runs his hands all over the body above him, grips him tightly and hears an answering whine from the back of Wally’s throat.

It’s all John can do to make sure that Wally’s still there. Still above him, still breathing the air that John can taste, color and spark.

“Take your ring off,” Wally whispers, just above John’s lips.

“Flash,” John says, torn. He’s mesmerized by the sight Wally makes in the dim light of the Green Lantern ring, the shadows that bruise his skin and darkens the hollow of his throat, supernatural and ethereal, and John doesn’t want to lose it.

“Take it off,” Wally says again, and then he lowers his head to put his lips on the back of John’s hand, wet, and he kisses his way up to John’s forefinger, then down to his fourth finger, softly and dearly. He hesitates, then ghosts his lips over the ring, his face shadowed eerily by the green light when he looks up at John again. His lips must be burning from the heat of the ring, but Wally doesn’t flinch. Chunks of flesh melt off his lips, before they heal lightning-fast once more, no red blood in the flood of green.

Maybe John is seeing things. Maybe John is going mad.

John raises his other hand to cup Wally’s face, and Wally leans into it, away from the ring. His lips look fine. He looks younger in the green light, and John has no idea what Wally’s seeing himself when he looks at John in the darkness of their bedroom.

John twists the ring off with his thumb. The room goes pitch black, and he drops the ring as Wally rushes up, misses his face and plants his kiss and half of his face on John’s right shoulder instead. John reaches around with both arms to hold Wally just in time for Wally to properly find John’s face, kisses him not gently but slowly, sticky-sweet. Wally’s hand cups the back of John’s neck as he straddles John properly, around his hips.

“Your eyes,” Wally whispers into the blackness. “They light up, they’re green, they’re beacons when you have the ring on. And it’s cool, and it’s amazing, and you’re an amazing guy, John.”

“Wally,” John says. He fumbles because Wally has always worn his heart on his goddamn sleeves, has always been what you see, what you get, and John has never been that. Could never be that. Can’t now find the words to tell Wally, _You, do you even know what you are to us, to me, not your speed and not your intelligence, but your smile and mochas and goddamn_ morals _, your flashes of brilliance._

“But I want to see your eyes,” Wally says. “I want to see you. I love the Green Lantern but I love—” he stops. He pauses.

And John’s heart stutters, not because Wally won’t say it. It stutters, because he thinks Wally might’ve been able to say it, before he came to this world and saw all that they could create, that they could become, and he became cautious. Worried. Scared.

“Come here,” John says, and he’s the more desperate of the two, he has always been the more desperate one.   

Later, Wally is wrapped around John, breathing in, breathing out, as if knowing John needs to hear it. “I talked to Clark,” he says, his voice half-muffled.

It takes a second for John to even realize what Wally’s talking about. His arms tighten around Wally because as it turns out, he’s never been afraid of Clark, but he can be afraid of him _for_ Wally. “About the public safety laws?” he asks.

“About conditions in prisons,” Wally says. “I started delivering stuff to prisons. Books, toys, electronics, I don’t know, the same stuff I take to hospitals, I guess.” He yawns. “And started doing visits. Delivering letters. I don’t know. It seems like a lot of the people there could use it.”

“Wally,” John says, a little helplessly, because—because of course that was solution Wally came up with. His job to drain out the tension, to lighten up the mood, but also to hand out his time and energy and _love_ , like every person he comes across deserves it, like he has enough to give to everybody, and more, he has the time and speed to do it.

“Clark didn’t mind,” Wally says. “He liked it. I think he’ll look into it, maybe, for higher security prisons, too.”

And then take another look at the public safety laws, John thinks, because that will raise the cost of incarceration, and oh, oh. Wally.

He pulls Wally closer instead. “Come on, Jiminy,” he says. “Time to sleep.”

Wally is startled into a laugh at that, a bright sound, clapping his hands like a seal’s. He won’t tell John what’s so funny, but well, what does he know. John shakes his head. Wally _is_ Jiminy, is Sofya, is Siddhartha. But only to John, only to Clark and Bruce and Diana of this world, only to those who have lost him once.

 

::

“I lied,” Bruce says.

“I’m sorry?” John asks. He’s on the phone, and he’s not sure why Bruce is calling him, but he always answers when any of his colleagues call.

“The rift,” Bruce says. “I can open it. It won’t be easy, but I think I’ll be able to manage it.”

John turns the ring around his finger. He knows Batman wouldn’t say even that much, if he weren’t very sure that he could open it again. “But you said,” he says.

“I know what I said,” Bruce says. “And now I’m saying I can open it.” He pauses. “I didn’t want him to leave, either.”

 _Either_ , like Bruce has known all along that John didn’t want Wally to leave, even when he was asking Bruce about the rift like a fucking idiot. John closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. But if you think, if you think you can, then I have to—”

“Do what you think is right,” Bruce says, tonelessly, and the screen goes black.

John wonders if that’s what Bruce’d told Clark, way back when. If Clark had ever turned to him, even after that day in the Oval Office, and asked in a moment of crisis, _What should I do, Bruce, am I doing this right?_ And Bruce had looked back at him, calmly, had let him know of the support Bruce brought him, the brilliant gadgets and unrivaled strategies that could accomplish mass destruction and the fall democracy, and had simply said, _Do what you think is right._

If Clark had done that, done what he thought was right.

If John is going to do that, do what he thinks is right. More, what in the world that might be, what he thinks is _right_.

 

::

 

In the dark, John can’t see the difference between yellow and red, can’t see the ocean in Wally’s eyes.

Wally’s lips trail down his throat, and in the small space that only Wally manages to find, where his neck meets his shoulder, Wally laughs, softly, like he’s happy, just happy to be here with John.

One day, John will be able to tell him, _Bruce can open the door for you_. Or: _there’s a new rift in the dimensions, it’s your time, if you hurry, you can go home_.

On that day, John will know Wally loves him, because Wally will say, _You know what Clark taught me? The reason he never flew away, left the planet in disgust. You know why Bruce never left Gotham, though he was one person who could afford to, in that damn city? Why Diana left her paradise, why Shayera stays, why J’onn stays? Why you never fly away to the other stars and moons and planets in your corps sector, despite peace on Earth?_

John could even argue for him, say: _We stay because this is our home._

On that day he could acknowledge: _This isn’t peace on Earth_.

Then he’d have to say: _But, you, Wally, this isn’t your home._

And Wally will say _This is my home_ , challengingly, forcefully, an attack, a forward move that’s as smoothly offensive as any of Batman’s. _And what you all taught me was that when something is wrong, you don’t run from it. You stay and correct it. I’m staying_.

 _Wally_ , John could say, and Wally will say _I want to, John, I’ve_ always _wanted to_. _With you. You idiot._

Wally reaches over to twist the ring out of John’s finger, comfortable doing it himself without asking John now, and he kisses the tips of each of John’s fingers. When he looks up just before the light goes out, John can see multitudes in those eyes. In the newborn darkness, Wally whispers, “I love you,” his voice wet like a sea creature’s, his fingers damp where they trail across John’s skin, and oh, if that day isn’t today, and if John couldn’t make his voice work to tell Wally all that he needs to hear, to say back in so many words _I love you too_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhhhh, okay, I am pretty nervous. Martianico, you said your happy spot was angst-with-happy-ending, and I hope I've hit that spot. Honestly, when you mentioned A Better World for this ship, I was hit pretty hard with a plot bunny, but I was not able to write the epic I wish I could have for you. I hope you found this enjoyable, at least. Thanks for reading. : )


End file.
